Psalm 34:20

For they spoke indeed peaceably to me; and speaking in the anger of the earth they devised guile. (Psalm 34:20 DR)

As the Psalmist continues this final section of Psalm 34, he elaborates upon the previous passage in which his enemies hated him without cause and winked with the eyes, by which he intends to expose their duplicitous actions against him. The previous passage can thus be seen somewhat as a preamble to this passage in which this guile is more fully explicated.

The first phrase is that they spoke indeed peaceably to me, which—when read as flowing forth from the winking of the eyes—indicates that their deception is intentional and calculated. Much like one would craft a deception against one’s enemies as a stratagem in war, so they have carefully considered how to deceive him. They act not out of blind rage or an out of control temper, but rather of cold and calculating malice. That is, they understand their hatred for him and like it, which is why they now take pains to treat him with such callous guile.

Cassiodorus and St. Augustine relate these passages specifically to Jesus’ opponents who on many occasions attempt to trap Him in His words so that they will have something to hold against Him. To lay such a trap, of course, entails that they have thought through how to trap Him and the various means by which He might use to escape, and thus how to cut off those avenues from Him. One such incident is where they question Him on account of paying taxes:

They seemed to speak peacefully when they said: Master, we know that Thou art a true speaker, and teaches the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not? Even a man who does not plan murder can devise guile; for example, if one plots to steal money or a possession from a neighbor. But here He added anger, so that their guile might be exposed as deadly. (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 34, 20, Ancient Christian Writers)

The trap against our Lord is thus cunningly set. They begin by setting the framework for His answer, and although it seems like flattery, it actually is a means by which they are attempting to elicit a non-equivocal answer from Him. For if He refuses to answer then He cannot claim to be someone who teaches the way of God, and if He gives some sort of equivocation on His answer then He cannot be called a true speaker.

The second half of the trap is thus prepared. For if He says it is not lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, He has committed treason against the Roman Empire, and the Romans can take care of the problem (and certainly will). However, if He says that it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, then presumably He holds Caesar as Lord over God, which would break the commandments. And even if this were a bit of a stretch in terms of outcome, His acceptance of Caesar’s tax as lawful would at the very least make Him seem to be a traitor to the people of Israel on the level of the tax collectors. St. Luke provides the resolution to this:

But he considering their guile, said to them: Why tempt you me? Shew me a penny. Whose image and inscription hath it? They answering, said to him, Caesar’s. And he said to them: Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s: and to God the things that are God’s. And they could not reprehend his word before the people: and wondering at his answer, they held their peace. (Luke 20:23-26 DR)

The guile which our Lord considers here is thus anticipated in this Psalm. His opponents in attempting to deceive Him speak peaceably in truthfully speaking of Him as One Who speaks the truth and teaches the way of God, but their anger leads them to weaponize the truth. That is, they are not interested in the truth for the sake of truth, but rather to use as a weapon against Him, which is the ultimate perversion of truth. Their guile turns even what is true into something meant to deceive, which can only be done out of an anger borne deep within the heart.

We can, after all, be incorrect about many things and unintentionally speak falsehoods. We can even speak untruths to serve our own purposes, which is bad enough in and of itself. But when we begin to use the truth to deceive, it indicates a heart full of malice, for the truth to be intentionally used in such a way requires a deliberation of a bad will which wishes to turn what is good to a bad end. We often turn good things to a bad end because of the weakness of our human nature or the raging of our appetites and passions, but the cold and calculating perversion of the good is on another level altogether.

It is this level which the Psalmist concludes with, noting that they speak in the anger of the earth. This is a curious phrase which in the Vulgate is in iracundia terrae loquentes. Neither the the Old Latin not the Septuagint use such an expression; the Old Latin has et super iram dolose agebunt, (and in wrath they will act deceitfully) and the Septuagint has καὶ ἐπ' ὀργὴν δόλους διελογίζοντο (and in wrath they were devising deceits). The Vulgate more closely follows the Hebrew here—specifically St. Jerome’s Hebrew translation—which has sed in rapina terrae verba fraudulenta concinnant—which is but in the plundering of the land they devise deceitful words.

The idea here is subtle but understandable. The rapine or plunder that the Psalmist speaks of is a sudden and violent action in which one is robbed of that which is most dear and valuable. The Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary provides this passage from Cicero as an example of rapina:

They said that the time had come for me to defend not only the advantages they enjoyed, but even the life and safety of the whole province, that they had now not even any gods in their cities to whom they could flee, because Caius Verres had carried off their most sacred images from the very holiest temples. That whatever luxury could accomplish in the way of vice, cruelty in the way of punishment, avarice in the way of plunder, or arrogance in the way of insult, had all been borne by them for the last three years, while this one man was praetor. That they begged and entreated that I would not reject them as suppliants, who, while I was in safety, ought to be suppliants to no one. (Cicero, Divinatio against Q. Caecilius, 1.3)

In the ancient world of the Psalmist, to have the land plundered meant for the agricultural output to be destroyed or severely curtailed, such that little or nothing of the harvest or crops would remain. Invading armies would often do this to weaken their opponent, since not only would they likely be besieged in their cities, but even if they could get resources externally these would also be diminished.

There was a fine line to be walked, however, in that the invading army also had to feed itself off of the land, and thus couldn’t simply pillage and plunder everything while they remained. This plundering would occur after the conclusion of the campaign as a means to keep the conquered people underfoot.

For the enemies of the Psalmist, to be plundering the land in their deceit could thus imply two things. The first is that they are simply being two-faced in openly assaulting him while speaking peace to him, what we in the modern world would call gaslighting. The second is that their anger and rage is so great that they will even do harm to themselves in seeking to destroy him, like an invading army destroying its own food supply so as to starve the city into submission.

Perhaps both are at work, and it is in this manner that they speak to the Psalmist in the anger of the earth; which figuratively speaks to the violence with which they seek to take his life. In another sense, they have their eyes fixed on lower things rather than the things of heaven, and thus their anger is not a righteous anger at injustice but rather one which arises from the basest parts of their soul, and is as far from higher things as heaven is from earth. Their anger is thus of this earth, full of violence and plunder, borne from the envy of the devil and not from the righteousness of God:

And let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak, and slow to anger. For the anger of man worketh not the justice of God. Wherefore casting away all uncleanness, and abundance of naughtiness, with meekness receive the ingrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. (James 1:19-22 DR)

In the spiritual life we are often guiled by the anger of the earth which is cloaked in nice words or the allure of our appetites and the sundry temptations which are set before our souls. The pleasures of this world can seem to bring the peace of which they speak, but in reality hide a deadly deception:

Daily the demons speak peacefully to us. This peace is the fruit of lust, but through anger thy devise deceits, just like sweet food on a hook in our sight—it is deadly to eat. (Arnobius the Younger, Commentary on the Psalms, 34, ACCS.)

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In this animation I found a nice marble-ish texture and used it as the base for a bunch of different precomps that I arranged in a grid. I applied loopFlow to each image in each precomp for the movement and then used some wiggle hold animation on the Position of the precomps in the main composition. I added in some effects and camera shake and color correction to conclude.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: